Politeness in British English

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Gold forest, English podcast. My name is Jordan and today I want to talk about politeness being polite. It's very important in English, and it's especially important in British English. I'm British myself, so I'm quite familiar with the extreme level, the high level of British politeness, we use lots of different techniques to make our spoken English and written English, more polite. So today I want to talk a little bit about some of these techniques, some of the things that British people do to make their that make their English more polite.

Of course, many of these things also are also done by non-British people, American people or Australian people, different countries or different people around the world that speak English, often use these techniques to become more polite, but I think it's especially common in British English. So let's have a look.

Same as last week: I have made a blog post which is on the website and there's also a small image on our Instagram. So if you want to, you can look at those things too. give you some more ideas, give you some more information about these things. All right. Well, introduction finished, let's have a look.

Let's have a think about these techniques for making polite English. So the first thing that we do is called softening when we are making a request, we are asking for something, we will soften these questions using extra words. So some of the most common ones are using can or could, for example, instead of saying, give me a cup of coffee, we would say, could I have a cup of coffee? Can I have a drink? Could I have a drink? Can and could in this context is the same meaning, and you can use can or could. I'm feeling a bit hot. Could you turn on the air conditioner? Can you open the window? It's the same meaning, can and could. That's the most common. We also use things like Would it be okay if I had a drink? Would it be okay if you opened the window? Would you mind opening the window? Would you mind getting me a drink? All of these different modal words, can and could and would, might, may these modal words are very helpful for softening language.

Something else that we do is express, doubt, even if there is no doubt in our idea. British people…English people will often introduce a little bit of doubt into their English to make it more polite, even if they feel very confident. So using words like perhaps maybe I think things like that, giving a little bit of doubt or compromise when we're giving our opinions. So saying things like I think that's a good idea! instead of That's a good idea! I think that might cause a problem! instead of That will cause a problem. So using these kind of possible words, maybe might can help us to soften giving opinions.

Something that's very important in English is about refusing things. If somebody offers you something or asks you to do something and you want to refuse, you want to say no, I don't want to do it. I can't do it. no, we often use different ways to avoid saying a direct no. We say things like I'd like to, but I can't. So even if that's not true, we would even if we definitely don't want to, it's much more polite to say, I would like to, but I can't. even if both people understand you and the person you're talking to, even if both people understand that you are not telling the truth and you don't want to do it, it's a the type of politeness acting, I guess. Both people understand that I'm saying something which is not true. I really don't want to do it, but I'm saying I'd like to, but I can't. It's like a performance and it's this is a like a politeness performance in English and it's polite, even though we are not telling them the truth.

So that's a couple of of the main politeness techniques that we use in English and the most important one is definitely that can and could for requests, if we're asking somebody to do something, we are always using could you or would you / would it be okay? Can you / Can I things like that?

And another easy technique that we use is to add apologies. Sorry, could I have a drink? Sorry it's a bit hot. Could you open the window? Even if the word sorry is not really necessary, I don't need to apologize. It's a very normal request, but we add the word sorry to make our requests even more polite.

So that's a couple of things of our politeness techniques. As I said, I've got a blog post on the website which covers all of these in more detail as well as some other techniques, so if you are interested in this topic, please check out the website because I've got a big write-up of all of these different techniques, lots of examples, some practice questions and things like that.

So thank you very much for listening today. I hope you've had a good week so far and enjoy the rest of your week. Take care and I'll see you in the next episode. Goodbye.